Nike Unveils Controversial Tiger Woods Ad

Jake ODonnell 09:28 pm, March 26th, 2013

If you haven't noticed, Tiger Woods is the man, again. Coming off a win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Doral, he's now happily in a high profile relationship and sitting at numero uno en el mundo. (That means #1 in the world.) So naturally, Nike sees this as an opportunity. Not to proclaim his prowess as a golfer, but to insinuate that nobody cares how bad a person you are as long as you get results. Mother Goose they are not.

But they are right. If, at any point we doubted the power of success, we'd be naive. A good economy gave George W. Bush the green light to start a war on shaky, if not outright false pretenses. A bad economy turned George W. Bush into one of the least liked Presidents of all time. Kobe had to win another ring to shake the rape allegations from 2003. Remember when all his sponsors dropped him? Remember when they all picked him back up? Winning really does erase the errors of your past, just as losing brings them to the forefront.

I suppose the controversy here isn't that Nike is forgiving Tiger for being a philandering, immature, entitled liar. The controversy is that we've forgiven him, and there's nothing we can do to change that. Unless he starts losing again. Then he's a schumck.